Forty-five years ago, the first episode of Star Trekaired on NBC. It was five years after the Soviet Union launched the first human into space, and the franchise explored a fictional 23rd century “United Federation of Planets” through a crew based on the starship Enterprise.
Six television series and 11 movies later, some aspects of Star Trek no longer seem futuristic (people still don’t live in space, but they are working on vacationing there).
To celebrate Star Trek’s anniversary and lasting impact, we enlisted help from the “Commander” of international Star Trek fan association Starfleet, Dave Blaser.
He and a handful of other Trekkies helped us point out these eight Star Trek technologies that have shifted from future fantasy to present reality.
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The Flip Phone
While on away missions, the Star Trek crew often speaks through handheld “communicators” that look like walkie talkies with a flip top — in other words, much like a clamshell mobile phone.
The likeness inspired Motorola in 1996 to name the first flip phone “StarTAC.”
It also caused some strife for Trekie Ted Anthony, who wrote in a 2006 article for the AP: “Once, when I was 6, the teenage son of one of my father’s colleagues fashioned me a handmade communicator out of a wood block, paint and chickenwire. A few months later, I left it in an airplane bathroom as we flew to Asia and caused something of a bomb scare.”
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